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May 25 2015

# London Grip New Poetry – Summer 2015

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This issue of London Grip New Poetry features poems by:

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*Stephen Bone *Anthony Costello *Edward Mycue
*Ben Banyard *Derek Adams *Danielle Hope
*Imogen Forster *Pam Job *Ajise Vincent
*Peter Phillips *James W Wood *Antony Johae
*Norbert Hirschhorn *Genevieve Scanlan
*Tanya Nightingale *Kat Soini
*Katherine Venn *Jan Hutchison *Peter Branson
*Teoti Jardine *Ian C Smith *Jeni Curtis
*Maggie Butt *Ian Humphreys *Myra Schneider

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Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors

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A printer-friendly version of London Grip New Poetry can be obtained at LG New Poetry Summer 2015

Please send submissions to poetry@londongrip.co.uk, enclosing no more than three poems and a brief, 2-3 line, biography

Editor’s introduction

This summer edition of London Grip New Poetry is the first one to celebrate itself with a launch reading. Enfield Poets have been generous enough to invite us to perform on June 6th at their welcoming venue in the Dugdale Centre. London Grip will be (future tense is still appropriate at the time of publication) represented by Derek Adams, Stephen Bone, Maggie Butt and Katherine Venn, all of whom appear in this current LGNP posting (and also in previous issues). A unique selling point in this event is that each of our featured readers has been asked to choose and perform a couple of poems by one of the excellent overseas poets published in LGNP during the last four years. I am very pleased that we have been able to present to English audiences some fine poets from Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. And of course the on-line international nature of London Grip means that we have also been introducing Australian poets to Canadian readers, Asian poets to North American ones and English poets to audiences everywhere!

We hope this summer launch reading will not be a one-off event and would welcome invitations from other poetry venues for future issues.

it is probable that many of our readers will identify our cover image as the tomato plant painting referred to in the poem ‘Picasso’s Studio’ by Derek Adams.

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
http://mikeb-b.blogspot.com/

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Stephen Bone: Boyhood Of Senesino

    Tremulous as a pot-bound hare –
    never before so close to wealth and title –

    I poured into pomade-scented air
    the gift God had graced me.

    Pierced the spangled matrons' granite hearts,
    drew from grown men a drip

    of tears with songs of ache and loss;
    then with a seamless switch slipped

    into laughing coloratura, skylark notes
    that threatened the Murano bowls,

    panels of quicksilvered glass. Even my father,
    face a map of hardship, swagged a smile,

    weight of a heavy purse already in his hand,
    eyes glinting like polished knives.

Senesino (1686-1758 ) was a celebrated Italian castrato

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Stephen Bone: Not out of the woods yet

    Left with this, I watch
    the scribble of your heart

    its flashed beat
    and I will you

    to hack through branches
    dense undergrowth

    to reach open ground,
    green and shadowless.

Stephen Bone’s work has appeared in various journals in the U.K. and U.S. including And Other Poems, Hinterland, London Grip, Seam, Shotglass, Smiths knoll, Snakeskin,The Interpreter’s House, The lake and The Rialto. Most recently in Ink,Sweat&Tears and Clear Poetry. First collection In The Cinema,published by Playdead Press 2014.

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Anthony Costello: Rapture

    How the word can snatch away
    like a bird of prey; say it quickly
    and eagles & hawks appear,
    the owl in flight, a hollow call,
    the dread of something feathered
    in the woods with your face on it –
    bliss, a rare bird calling from afar.

Anthony Costello’s first collection of poems, The Mask, was published in October, 2014 by Lapwing Publications, Belfast.

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Edward Mycue: Necessary Conditions

    Many of us could never go home
    even when we had not left it.

    Home is a windsong in our hearts.

    These hearts have exploded,
    repositioned themselves, ending
    as much the mends themselves
    as the remaindered hearts.

    The heart needs permission to come home

    where contrition’s not expected,
    and explanation is enough.

Edward Mycue has lived in San Francisco, CA since 1970. He was born 1937 in Niagara Falls, raised in Dallas from age 11 with school there and Boston. His first book was Damage Within The Community. In 1979 came The Singing Man My Father Gave Me from Anthony Rudolf’s Menard Press in London. Mindwalking, selected poems, came out in 2008 and Song Of San Francisco in 2012.

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Ben Banyard: Darkroom

    After she died, he tried it for size;
    not much more than a coal hole, a cramped cell,
    yet here he’d documented the family.

    He took a fresh brew to the lounge
    with his books of negatives and contact sheets
    and peered at the images with a magnifying glass.

    Here his son’s eleventh birthday,
    his daughter, small and serious in a tutu
    and there his wife, a tiny smiling profile.

    There were dozens of pictures he hadn’t printed
    and later, bathed in red light, he held his breath
    as he rocked her face back into life.

Ben Banyard lives in Portishead, where he writes poetry and short fiction. His work has appeared in print and online in Popshot Magazine, Lunar Poetry, Sarasvati, Ink Sweat & Tears, Snakeskin, The Stare’s Nest and others. Ben edits Clear Poetry, a blog publishing accessible contemporary poetry every Monday and Thursday

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Derek Adams: December Morn, 1915

after a photograph by Theodore Miller

    The snow is not deep
    but my sneakers are thin,
    toes already numb.

    Papa’s camera is prepared,
    stood on three wooden legs
    that do not shake like mine.

    White arms close to my side,
    hands balled into fists,
    teeth gritted to stop them chattering.

    ‘Keep still Li-Li
    and do not smile.’
    I do not smile.

    I think about going indoors:
    putting all my clothes back on,
    the hot chocolate Papa has promised.

    He inserts a glass plate in the camera.
    Uncovers, counts two, then covers the lens,
    says ‘I will call this one December Morn.’

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Derek Adams: Picasso’s Studio

‘Picasso and I fell into each others’ arms and between laughter and tears and having my bottom pinched and my hair mussed we exchanged news…’ Lee Miller. Vogue October 1944

     He takes my hand, pulls me
    into the studio. Shows me
    the this and the that of it.

    A portrait of Nusch Eluard on a scrap
    torn from a paper tablecloth,
    coloured with fruit and vegetable juice.

    Eight canvases, some still wet,
    of the tomato plant on the windowsill
    his new favourite model.

    I pick one of its small soft ripe fruits
    pop it in my mouth. Picasso scowls.
    I explain, ‘I love the idea of eating art.’

Derek Adams is a professional photographer who writes poetry because he has to! He has published 3 collections of poetry; the most recent unconcerned, but not indifferent is a poetry portrait of the surrealist artist Man Ray. He has an M.A. in creative and life writing from Goldsmiths.

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Danielle Hope: Sower

1888 Van Gogh

    Extinct now, this man
    that under the dinner-plate sun
    scatters grain from his right hand.

    Rising from a purple sea of furrows
    he is the blackness of a lone tree
    branches barely dawning in yellow buds.

    If the crows will eat elsewhere
    as daylight lengthens
    he can watch his gems grow.

    Others now ride the new sowers –
    bright red machines toil the hours –
    gold grains carted in trucks and ships.

    Gone is his muscled finger and hunched back,
    his head bent to blue earth, cap pulled down,
    left hand clasping tightly.

Danielle Hope is a poet and doctor, originally from Lancashire, now living in London. She founded and edited Zenos, a British and international poetry magazine, worked for Survivors’ poetry, and is currently advisory editor for Acumen Literary Magazine. Her work has been published widely in magazines, anthologies and on the London Underground. She has published 4 collections with Rockingham press. Website www.daniellehope.org

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Imogen Forster: Storks on a roof, Figueres

    Four storks – three white, one black –
    on an ordinary high, flat roof.

    White, with his black wings, is not purely white,
    while Black is all black but for his white belly
    and his scarlet bill and legs. These are
    two birds from a manuscript’s margins,
    an illuminator’s idle sketch.

    They stand as if carved in oak,
    heraldic birds set like watchmen
    at the ends of a pew or the tall,
    finger-weathered pieces
    of a giant’s board game.

    Back to back, face to face,
    formal and comical,
    and as utterly still as the
    knot of people who stand
    gazing up at them.

Imogen Forster is a translator, mainly of art history, and publishes poems on-line and in print. She posts haiku on Twitter as @ForsterImogen.

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Pam Job: Highwire Act

    Now the funambulists are back in town
    bringing their golden birds and rainbow
    kites to fly like thunderclouds over the heads
    of the crowd. Air is their world

    and they will show us how to navigate
    uncertainties, how to juggle our lives
    between sparkle and sequins, between
    the light of the moon and the spotlights.

    They will demonstrate balance as an attitude
    while spanning the griefs that divide us.
    Remember, we are looking for ourselves,
    for our reflections in mirrors held up by the clowns.

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Pam Job: Me and Kim Jong Un

    Bring your notes, my writing buddies said.
    It’s always good to see your work in process.

    I read at random: Bacon shows the self for what it is.
    Then: Subway in New York is more diaristic
    because of the pressure of time. I look gnomic,
    carry on: A quiet creeps into your work of still looking
    but her time and the rhythm is more lulling.

    It did seem important that Camille Pissarro was born
    in the Caribbean and that Elizabeth Bishop was preoccupied
    with figuring maps of places we inhabit.
    Bits of my mind fluttering away, chattering
    to themselves and me, trying now to net them.

    How about: the symbolic act – there was no Gulf War.
    I could try to re-write history as poetry, deny it all,
    right back to Eden. Somehow that seems a dishonesty.

    Then I think of Kim Jong Un, surrounded by his men
    taking notes of every word he says. They'll end up with stuff
    like mine, nonsense strewn on every page,
    but they are paid to turn it into song.

Pam Job has won awards in several poetry competitions and has co-edited four anthologies, most recently KJV: Old Text – New Poetry (2011) for the 400th anniversary of the publication of the KIng James Version of the Bible and so too have the doves gon‘ (2014), reflections on the theme of conflict to commemorate the centenary of WW1. Her poems have been published in Acumen, The French Literary Review, Artemis and an anthology of Essex poems. She helps organise Poetry Wivenhoe, a live monthly poetry event in Essex.

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Ajise Vincent: The Elders

    The elders of my land
    aren't groomers of dreams
    neither are they waterers of visions
    they are termites who feast on seeds
    meant to feed posterity.

    The elders of my land
    are not wise men with grey hair
    whose grandeur seeks peace at the birth of dawn
    and solitude at the demise of dusk
    they are mediocrities who propagate diatribes
    to boost their fame.

    The elders of my land
    are not seers who make forecasts
    neither are they prophets of truth
    they are pharisees of doom
    who deserve to go blind
    on their way to Damascus.

Ajise Vincent is an undergraduate of Economics at a prestigious University in Nigeria. He is a contributor to various online and print magazines.

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Peter Phillips: Ukraine Sunflower

    Dogs were howling. I don’t know what breed
    but something like wolves; so maybe Alsatians.
    They wouldn’t stop, their noise was contagious.
    Soon, we were all weeping. When they came,

    we quietened, but not the dogs. Soldiers
    picked through our debris-scorched field. Most
    wore balaclavas. Only yesterday, children had skipped
    through us, laughing at how tall we were. We don’t

    feel tall now. Soon trucks arrived,
    more soldiers. The dead were found, their pockets
    emptied. Dogs kept howling. Pieces of the plane
    were scattered, some crushed us. I said,
    Can we still be called Sunflowers?

    And the dogs? They were shot.

Peter Phillips‘ fifth collection was Oscar and I, confessions of a minor poet (Ward Wood Publishing, 2013). He is currently writing a series of poems called Saying it with Flowers.

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James W Wood: Gush

    A dry season
    and the dust
    settles hard on the riverbed:
    no water for miles. Atmospheres
    thicken with the tang of rain,
    clouds boil, skies blur into slate, a breeze
    keens through the hills, the klaxon
    of a deluge coming. And though longed for, it frightens:
    livestock disappear, men
    take cover in shacks, huddling
    for protection. Drop, drop,
    the fat
    and fatter, the hiss and stream
    from trickle to torment, the gloop and splatter
    of water on glass. Mud
    rages through the gulch, branches drown
    and the river thickens as its tributaries
    thunder into chorus. This year
    will be good for us, be good to us, be good
    O Gods, they say.
    .                                       Some days later
    the rain has buried its madness in the river,
    the sun teases seeds into life, cattle
    lap at the riverbank, and men
    give thanks that it’s all over
    for another year. The Gods are just
    but they need a little coaxing:
    this ancient cycle of prayer and deliverance,
    those heads bowed low. That need for forgiveness.

James Wood’s recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in The North, Stand, Under the Radar and other publications in North America and the UK. His first collection, The Anvil’s Prayer, was published in 2013; ‘Gush’ is taken from his second collection.

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Antony Johae: Spinning a Tale

    Passing through west-Essex villages, I’m on the bus to the airport for flight to
    Lebanon. There’s a money-spider on my cap. It’s dangling from the peak in
    front of my eyes.

    As I check in, it seems he’s chosen to fly with me. Does this mean he’ll bring
    me luck?

    After Passport Control, we are stopped.  A big black dog sniffs my bag for
    cash.  He’s not onto my money-spider. We are let through to the Gate.

    Now we’re aboard and my money-spider’s dangling again. If he’s bound for
    Beirut, I wonder where he’ll be staying.  At Five-Star Phoenicia?

Antony Johae divides his time between Lebanon and the United Kingdom. His Poems of the East will be published by Gipping Press in summer 2015.

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Norbert Hirschhorn: Jebel Kneissa, Lebanon

    An eastern glow haloes dun-coloured
    Cathedral Mountain, spreading light to hill tops,
    grape vines, umbrella pines – all dialects of green –
    then touches down to the valley below.

    A cockerel cries the dawn. Our neighbour hawks
    his morning cough, children’s sleepy voices stir.
    Syrian labourers walk the road and the village tannoy
    proclaims this day’s necessities. Someone’s chopping parsley.

    All is well. Safely rise. God is nigh.

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Norbert Hirschhorn: The Disappeared

    What makes us human is soil.
    Even landfill of bones, shredded jeans;
    mass graves paved over for parking.

    What makes us human are portraits
     – graduation, weddings –
    mounted in house shrines and on fliers, Have You Seen?

    Names inscribed around memorial pools
    or incised on granite. Names waiting,
    waiting for that slide of DNA, or any piece of flesh --
    for the haunted to be put to rest.

    What makes us human is soil.
    To stare into a hole in the ground,
    fill with the deceased, throw earth down,
    place a stone. Bread. Salt.

For Fouad Mohammed Fouad
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Norbert Hirschhorn is an international public health physician, living in Lebanon and the UK; commended by President Bill Clinton as an ‘American Health Hero.’ He is as well a published poet, his poems appearing in four full collections. ‘The Disappeared’ was Highly Commended in the 2015 Torriano poetry competition.See www.bertzpoet.com.

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Genevieve Scanlan: Salt

    I don't have a prayer for this.
    I don't know a song that fits.
    If I thought prayers worked
    I wouldn't need one –
    I'd know things were all well in hand.

    But there should be a prayer
    for standing cold in the steam
    of your parents' drab bathroom.
    For finding that home is also a house,
    built according to outdated codes.

    There should be a prayer for finding
    things saved to the Desktop of your Dad's computer:
    cartoon women in burqas
    beside cartoon women in less –
    plus articles on 'liberal feminist lies'.

    I reject the Father God but still
    I wish there was a prayer -
    to transubstantiate
    fear into some holy communion.

    We've been needing one
    as long as we've had burqas.
    We've been needing one
    as long as we've had skin.

    Ever since Lot's wife turned her gaze
    to what the Father deemed salacious
    and became a pillar: firm,
    but streaked with salt.

Genevieve Scanlan lives in Dunedin, New Zealand, where she recently completed an MA in English. She has had poems published in Poetry New Zealand and The Otago Daily Times

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Tanya Nightingale: Gold

    We grind our way to hell upon a rope
    With just one death a week, if we’re in luck.
    Each time the boss appears, we watch his skin.
    (He's here one sweatless hour, once each month.)
    "Nine tonnes, this year!" he yells.  “More weight, more pay!"
    The chains they lust for have us by the throat.

    The same set words are coiled inside his throat.
    How slick they are, how easy, on their rope:
    "A close community, and such good pay!"
    One man has lost a kidney; that's his luck,
    One man goes deaf. His last cheque comes this month.
    The sweat that drenched us freezes on our skin.

    Her future is as close as her own skin.
    The home she cannot own tied round her throat.
    A happy bride, she celebrates this month,
    Then braids her hair in secret, hides her rope.
     Her parents praise her wisdom and her luck.
     Her gift is more secure than all his pay.

    To prove celebrity, stars wear their pay.
    The ornaments they flaunt have moved from skin
    To fronting rappers' teeth when strutting Luck
    Breaks out her smile.  It weights their ears, their throats.
    If gilded, you could sell a hangman’s rope.
    Great Pluto, make me Midas for a month!

    When Croesus measured out pure discs each month
    His subjects took the king's face home as pay.
    The Incas saw the glory not the rope
    So did not fear the strangers' fevered skin.
    The pirates took their ransom and slit throats,
    Then strung them from their shining trees of luck.

    The oldest sign of romance and good luck
    Needs eighty tonnes of cyanide each month.
    "My God!  I’d kill to wear that!" What slight throat
    Would not look great with this on?  Where's my pay?”
    We all romance the chain under the skin,
    Chase Lucifer's commodity, his rope.

    Reserves and luck run out. We’ll give our pay
    For just one month in someone else’s skin.
    Our throats sold to this solid sun, tight rope.

Tanya Nightingale won the Yorkshire Open Poetry Competition in 2008. She is Reviews Editor for Dream Catcher Magazine and has had poetry published in Orbis , Acumen, Other Poetry and Poetry Nottingham, amongst others. She appeared as guest writer on Helen Burke’s radio show ‘Word Salad’ for East Leeds FM (twice) and has performed in International Women’s Week with Real People Theatre. Tanya performed with Rose Drew in ‘She’s the Cultured One’ at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2011, at the Galtres Festival in July 2013 and a specially-commissioned show at the Keats Shelley House in Rome in May 2014.

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Kat Soini: Shaped Like Care

    The best lies happen just like this:
    You’re in the street corner, smoking your last cigarette,
    and I have a gun,
    shaped like a proposal,
    shaped like a twenty pound note.

    It’s raining, just like this:
    You’re wet all over, teeth bared. I’m going to pretend
    it’s a permission,
    shaped like a smile,
    stretched thin like oil over water.

    You bleed, just like this:
    It’s not an accident. I’m too
    careful, I care too much, look
    at me, look, I have stitches
    for your scratches, for your
    careless snatches of free will.

    The night ends, just like this:
    You say thank you and your face
    is wet, all over.
    You have a smile,
    shaped like a gun and I have a proposal
    to pull the trigger,
    again.

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Kat Soini: Resolute

    I went walking,
    trying to forget your October skin.
    In the still distant dawn
    the grass cried all over my bare feet,
    mourning us.

    I have made this decision
    a hundred times,
    and unmade it hundred and one.

    The sky was no colour I could name.
    It followed me to the river
    greeting it
    like a lover, back from the war.

    I have thought things through,
    and then felt them,
    then thought them again.

    The land knew me still
    and it knew me running.
    Measureless roads
    echoed with time.

    I have questioned my choices
    and regretted nothing.

Kat Soini is a Finn living in the UK, trying to keep a foot in each country but often falling somewhere in between. An over-educated academic by day, she’s been writing fiction and poetry for a long time and is finally getting organised enough to actually put it out there for strangers to read. Recent publications can be found in poetandgeek.com, The Missing Slate and Glitterwolf. A geek at heart, she is fond of all things otherworldly as well as woolly socks, cats, tulips and cinnamon-hazelnut coffee. Kat blogs at https://katsoini.wordpress.com

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Katherine Venn: Ascent

    Tonight we take the slow approach, ambling
    hand in hand
    toward the rock we’re here to clamber.

    We search its surface for the clues
    that will take us to the top: the climbing that we do
    is still on sight, each time new,

    a puzzle that we labour over.
    You take the lead and I follow after,
    roped together by our desire:

    the slow burn of friendship
    pushes us up,
    turns downward force on the boulder’s lip

    into this slow and measured
    movement forward,
    a mutual pulling upward,

    your fingers searching
    for a cleft to haul us up on,
    using the body’s friction;

    making cunning hooks
    of heels and toes, wedged into cracks
    and fissures of the rock,

    hands fumbling to find a route,
    the hidden hold that will take our weight,
    and lead us to the summit –

    until we come to it, and each other’s eyes,
    where we bivouac for the night
    under the friendly bedspread sky.

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Katherine Venn: The garden

    Last night I dreamt I walked the garden
    that my parents planted.
    It was just as I remembered
    and more than it had ever been –
    its pond bright with the flash of fish
    roses climbing on a sunny wall
    the tumbledown greenhouse
    restored with all its pipes and tricks.

    The words surfaced slowly
    like someone whispering in my ear:
    they tended their acre. Now it’s up to you
    to find your own work here.

Katherine Venn was born in London and studied English Literature and Language at Oxford. She now works in London in publishing but took a year out do creative writing MA at UEA, taking the poetry strand.. She has been published in the Duino International Poetry Competition’s anthology, Roads; in the UEA anthology Eight Poets: 2009; on the Caught by the River website, as well as in London Grip ,Magma and Third Way. For several years she coordinated the literature programme for Greenbelt arts festival

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***

Jan Hutchison: The Keeper

after a stone carving at Bollingen

    During the first part of my life
    the dwarf stood outside
    its den in the garden

    its spine was rigid
    its mouth
    swelled in a dolphin pout

    during the second part of my life
    its kettledrum thighs
    pounded out judgements

    I crouched among the willows
    and the silence of a question
    blew through me

    in the third part of my life
    the dwarf was wounded by a flint
    and I was its keeper

    I learned language from the inside
    the words I'd surrendered
    the word I would not

This poem’s source is a stone in Jung’s garden at Bollingen. Jung hewed at a small stone he possessed and noticed a circle on the surface like an eye and carved out a tiny man, a homunculus. He thought it represented both youth and age and lived in the innermost soul of man. It roamed through the unconscious soul and pointed to the gates of the sun and to the land of dreams. The poem responds to this in a personal way.

Jan Hutchison is a New Zealand poet who is published widely. Recent collections of her poetry are The Happiness of Rain and Days among Trees

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***

Peter Branson: Anno Dominoes

    As churchyard walks are paved with hand-me-downs
    from graves, immutable as lichen on
    old tombs, they lay their runes to suit the rule.
    These days it’s dominoes, town centre pub.
    One knocks. Four warders on death watch, dots float
    before those rheumy eyes, dust motes on shrouds.
    Once wrecking balls, gaze molten ice, dead-end,
    drop-out, their cause defiance, these roaring boys
    on motorbikes, they slow to gentle stall,

    like bowling jacks, one, every now and then,
    kicked into touch, black-balled, so wait their turn
    to frown and feign surprise, as, close of day,
    the landlord rings his passing bell, three strikes;
    invokes headmaster, foreman, magistrate.

Peter Branson’s poetry has been published in Acumen, Agenda, Ambit, Anon, Envoi, The London Magazine, The North, Prole, The Warwick Review, Iota, The Frogmore Papers, SOUTH, Crannog, THE SHOp, Rattle, The Raintown Review, The Columbia Review, The Huston Poetry Review, Barnwood and Other Poetry; his latest book is Red Hill, Selected Poems, 2000-2012, published by Lapwing, May 2013.

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***

Teoti Jardine: Having The Time And Space

    clouds describe themselves against the blue
    changing shape before I read their meaning
    the warm and solid earth eases against my
    back as I lie and look past them beyond the
    blue where thoughts can find no holding place

    I’m on the bank above the old Purau Stock Track
    the snorting shuffle of cattle and sheep still echoes
    from years long gone my dog Amie pricks her ears
    and lifts her nose she can see them passing by
    off to a fresh pasture or perhaps the Works

    our view is framed by the green of pine trees giving
    the blue sky its proud display where a Monarch
    Butterfly’s orange and black startles through and
    higher still a hawk sees we are not carrion we’re alive
    grateful for the time and space to lie here looking

Teoti Jardine is of Maori, Irish and Scottish decent. His tribal affiliations are: Waitaha, Kati Mamoe, Kai Tahu. He attended the Hagley Writers School in 2011 and his poetry has been published in the Christchurch Press, London Grip, Te Karaka, Ora Nui, Catalyst, and JAAM. He had short stories published in the International Issues of Flash Frontier 2013. He is member of the Canterbury Poets Collective Committee. At the moment he and his dog Amie are of no fixed abode.

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***

Ian C Smith: A Filigree of Fog Rising

    Running a bath qualifies as noisy here
    where distant neighbours tend secrets,
    a car’s arrival, door closing, trumpeted fanfares.
    I rehearse phrases to disdainful cats,
    the donkeys a better audience, all ears.
    Bold currawongs plunder the cats’ leftovers.

    On still mornings I listen to the river
    rushing and chattering much like those
    who have visited places, or are about to.
    Excessive recent snow in the mountains
    will make that river babble like Marco Polo,
    I joke to the gentle jenny.

    On my daily dreamy walk I take care
    skirting a sinkhole I named Dragon’s Lair
    when my boys were small and I was impressionable.
    I fear reaching the edge of consciousness,
    familiar canopy of sky darkening,
    rephrasing embarrassed unheard cries.

Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in, Australian Poetry Journal, New Contrast, Poetry Salzburg Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Rabbit Journal, The Weekend Australian & Westerly. His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide). He lives in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, Australia.

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***

Jeni Curtis: Ghost horse

    I arrive at the field too late
    blood gilding my hooves. The ale wives,
    the cutpurses, the layers out of bodies
    here no longer.

    All is silent. Low cloud
    weaves, wreathes the trees, scarfs
    across the ground, silvered
    silk in the moonlight.

    An owl cries.

    They took his body, punctured
    with wounds, pierced with indignities,
    broken; crowns whether
    gold or thorns come at a cost.

    Next year the harvest will
    be gathered in as usual and I
    will eat fresh hay.

    Kings ascend, descend;
    world and wheel move on –
    poor Richard
    for he is gone.

Jeni Curtis is a teacher and writer from Christchurch, New Zealand. She has a keen interest in Victorian literature and history. She is a member of the Christchurch branch of the International Dickens Fellowship, and editor of their magazine, Dickens Down Under. She has published poems, short prose pieces and short stories in various publications including the ChristchurchPress, Takehe, JAAM, the Quick Brown Dog, NZPS anthology 2014, and 4th Floor. She is secretary of the Christchurch Poets’ Collective.

The image of Richard III by Andrew Jamieson was commissioned by the Richard III Society.

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***

Maggie Butt: Do Not Pass Go

    A red dot on Free Parking was the clue
    that worlds-away in Leeds a girl at Waddington’s
    had boxed a huge Get Out of Gaol Free card,
    the chance to step back into Baker Street.
    The Red Cross parcel’s tins of margarine
    and processed cheese were grabbed
    to feed their grinding hunger, but Monopoly
    was opened gingerly – to feed their fragile hope.

    A sentry posted on the hut, the game afoot.
    Mayfair-level banknotes for every country
    they’d creep through, folded in the pile of top-hat
    money. A compass. Silk maps stuffed in the hotels,
    imprinted with: the railway routes which chug
    across a continent towards the sooty scent
    and rush hour roar of Fenchurch Street; the hills
    and rivers which split the Stalag from the Strand;
    dark forests and wide plains which open
    to the Old Kent Road. Do Not Pass Go.

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***

Maggie Butt: In Praise of Beaches

    For they fill and empty with human tide
    For wives of fishermen have watched upon them
    For hollyhocks and valerian may flower upon them
    For they have the power to make me lie down and rest
    For the incoming tide will not let me oversleep
    For they give leave for us to read in public
    For the air is thick with the salted words
    For they smell of coconut and ice cream
    For they add crunch to sandwiches
    For the generations may mix freely
    For girls shall anoint each other’s backs with oil
    For children may shriek without reprimand
    For students check into them in lieu of hotel rooms
    For sun umbrellas shall blossom in primary-school colours
    For the shade of an umbrella is enough
    For they have necessitated the invention of the wind-break
    For bodies of all shapes are unabashed
    For one may compare one’s thighs, both favourably and unfavourably
    For they come in flavours of pebble, shingle and sand
    For they may be black, white, yellow or red
    For they glitter with the powder of seashells
    For small clouds shall pretend to be smoke-signals
    For sunsets stain them implausible shades of fushcia and gold
    For light-houses may wink protectively over them
    For they lend themselves to walking and thinking
    For plovers will pity the curlews’ lament
    For the unwanted and forgotten is washed up on them
    For the terminally lonely may leave their clothes in a neat pile

Maggie Butt’s fifth poetry collection, Degrees of Twilight, is due from The London Magazine Editions and follows the illustratedSancti Clandestini – Undercover Saints and Ally Pally Prison Camp. Maggie is an ex journalist and BBC TV producer living in London. http://www.maggiebutt.co.uk

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***

Ian Humphreys: The housewife’s saviour

    The slowcooker seemed like the housewife’s saviour.
       Pop in some chops, some stock, some bits and bobs
    of veg, a wedge of bone for gravy flavour.
    The slowcooker steamed – oh housewife’s saviour!
       She bought the device as she thought it might save her
    lots and lots of time and fuss and washing up.
    The slowcooker seemed like the housewife’s saviour.
       He moaned about the loans she burnt on Internet buys,
    shopping channel lies – but she would not waver.
    The slowcooker steamed at his rotten behaviour.
       Chuck in a chilli for punch, a pinch of spite,
    some pills to still the questions, crush the angst he gave her.
    The slowcooker gleamed like the housewife’s saviour.
       Slop in some stock, a severed hand with wedding band,
    some bits and bobs of bone, his mobile phone, and simmer, simmer, simmer.

Ian Humphreys lives in West Yorkshire and is studying for a Creative Writing MA at the Manchester Writing School. His work has appeared in anthologies and recently in journals including Ambit, Ink Sweat & Tears and Butcher’s Dog. He won the 2013 PENfro Poetry Competition and has been shortlisted for the Bridport and Fish Prizes.

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***

Myra Schneider: ‘It’s Sensitive’

    he says, ‘no need to press the buttons hard –
    stroke them.’ Sensitive to whom? I wonder
    and Shelley’s plant rises before my eyes.

    He peers at me through severe lenses as if
    suspecting I mistreat it so I don’t say
    its sensitivity seems to be an excuse

    for shirking work, don’t remark its forbears
    willingly washed three towels at a time
    but it believes more than two is overload,

    donkey-plods and leaves a dripping heap
    in its hub. And I don’t complain it roughs up
    jumpers, tears silk in its whirring darkness.

    Sensitive my foot, I mutter when I climb
    into bed that night. In a dream I confront
    the gleaming white, implacable body

    and, scorning the row of beckoning buttons, raise
    an axe in a surge of hate, smash its smugness.
    Behind it I see the long-gone machines,

    hefty, unsophisticated, trusty
    as sheepdogs. But next morning I find it
    quite unblemished and white as innocence

    belittling the kitchen sink. Sensitive!
    The word clangs as I feed it socks and shirts.
    Cursing, I stroke its buttons, catch it smirking.

Myra Schneider’s most recent collection is The Door to Colour (Enitharmon 2014). She co-edited Her Wings of Glass, an anthology of ambitious poetry by contemporary women poets (Second Light Publications 2014). Other publications include books about personal writing.

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